The Flu
by DuckofIndeed
Summary: Kefka always had to make a spectacle of everything. Having the flu was no exception.


I have been writing a lot of depressing stories lately, and I thought it was time to write another humorous one, so I turned to an old idea I had where Kefka gets sick and pesters Leo. At first, I really didn't know how I'd make such a vague idea into an actual story, but somehow I managed, and I think it turned out pretty darn okay.

Kefka, Leo, and whatever else involved in this story are property of the lovely Square Enix.

* * *

**The Flu**

During wartime, General Leo expected no less from his men than the strictest obedience, to march into battle without the slightest hesitation, and for concern for their own safety to be the farthest thing from their minds.

And then the flu hit.

Kefka, his second in command, had already tracked down "the one responsible" for starting the whole epidemic (a runny nose and a raw throat were the least of that poor fool's worries now), but it hadn't prevented it from spreading all throughout the camp within just a few short days. And now, all of Leo's battle-hardened men had been reduced to a pitiful bunch of bleary-eyed, red-nosed boys, shuffling about and hacking wet coughs when they should be marching about with their heads held high and their backs straight and their shoulders squared.

Leo had been spared from their fate thus far, however, and since the day it had become clear the sickness was going to continue its invasion, with no signs of stopping until the entire camp had been overrun by it, he had confined himself to his tent, not allowing anyone in unless it was clear they had not been infected, as well. The shivering, hacking lot his soldiers had become was bad enough without their General becoming another casualty of human weakness.

Leo groaned when Kefka barged into his tent one day when he was in the middle of making plans he couldn't be sure his men could actually follow through on. He groaned doubly when he took notice of the fact that the man was sniffling and glaring down at him through puffy eyes, even the absurd feathers he always wore in his ponytail seeming to droop, while more loose locks of his blonde hair hung in his face than ever before.

"Get out," Leo said with a wave of his quill pen, but it appeared quite the opposite had passed his lips when Kefka sat down in the chair across from him. He didn't even know why that was there when such a thing was too obvious an encouragement for the man to stay longer. Though, come to think of it, Kefka was just as content to sit on tables as he was objects typically reserved for sitting, so it seemed he was doomed to endure the man's presence either way.

"It's freezing outside," Kefka said as he pulled tighter about himself the many, many layers of clothing he always seemed to be adorned with. Leo sometimes wondered if it was to compensate for his small stature, even when such a thing was really quite unnecessary, considering his height in no way detracted from people's inclination to avoid him.

"It's early autumn." For whatever reason, his pen remained poised in one hand, even though there was little chance of returning to his work undistracted anytime soon. Kefka had a habit of making himself at home far too easily.

His companion made a show of shivering, even if he hadn't been just two seconds ago. "And your point is…?"

"My point is, I have no desire to catch whatever it is that's been going around, so if you'll please leave…." He didn't know why he bothered being polite. Kefka never was, and people tripped over their own feet rushing to do whatever _he_ wanted.

Kefka gave a noisy sniff and wiped his nose with the back of one hand, an act that received no shortage of barely-hidden grimacing on Leo's part, and he continued in the stuffy voice that was always a trademark of those who were highly contagious. "_You're_ being rather selfish today, don't you think? Here I am, clearly suffering, and with a chance I might not even make it through the night, mind you, and you turn me away. Is that how you treat people in need, Leo?" He paused to sneeze into his cape. "Any starving, blind orphans you've refused to assist recently?"

"I'd hardly compare your level of discomfort to that of an impoverished orphan—"

"A _blind_, impoverished orphan."

"Even less so," Leo said. "And I really don't see any way I could possibly help you in the first place, whether I was willing to or not. We have a medic. Go see him. He's far better suited to this kind of thing than _I_ am."

Kefka crossed his arms. "You're right, Leo. He certainly did a fine job of preventing _this_ whole mess."

He had a point. It was a rare moment indeed when the other man showed anything that could be mistaken for sound logic. Leo closed his eyes and sighed.

"And what is it you think _I_ can do for you, then?"

His companion looked about himself, as if just now considering this very thing. At last, he turned back to him, the answer in hand. "Your tent's more comfortable than mine."

The General arched an eyebrow. "Our tents are identical." In all honesty, Kefka's tent was actually _nicer_ than his was, despite the fact that the man sported a lower rank than him. Emperor Gestahl spoiled him. There was really no other explanation for it.

Kefka's head gave a slow shake, the dire manner in which he did so undermined by eyes he clearly had trouble keeping open. "No, they're really not." He coughed, but unlike with his sneeze, without the courtesy of covering his face, and Leo drew back in his seat. "And your tent's much warmer, too."

"I really don't see how that's possible."

"Well, it is!" Kefka said as his voice rose, only to have his words catch in his throat and send him into a coughing fit. The General slid his chair further away from the other man, taking his pen and his notes with him.

Once this display had ended, Kefka looked back up at him, blinking weakly. "You see what a sorry state I'm in, Leo? That's why I _have_ to stay here. I'll _freeze_ to death if I go anywhere else," he said, before he was reduced to another episode of wild hacking.

"It got up to 80 degrees yesterday," Leo said.

His coughing ended just a bit too abruptly this time, and he glared at the General with bloodshot eyes. "You seem awfully obsessed with the weather today, Leo."

Heaving a deep breath, the General said, "Well, in that case, if you're so cold, go back to your own tent and take a nap. You can even take my blankets if you want." It wasn't like he really needed them. Not with it being so warm out. "You know what, why don't you just take the entire day off. In fact, take off _every_ day until you recover."

Kefka gave a most unpleasant sniff and stared at him. "I don't need your permission to take time off, _Leo_."

He did, actually, but never mind that. When Kefka failed to budge, Leo stood and moved to his cot before grabbing the sheets within one fist and shaking them at him, in case the extra gesture was necessary to make the man comprehend just what he was offering.

"Go get some rest and let me do my work. I assure you, you're not going to feel any better sitting around here."

Kefka slammed his hands down on the table. "I'm not going anywhere, Leo! I don't even think I could make it all the way back to my tent!" He slid his hands across the table and dropped his head onto his arms. "Not unless you carry me!"

Well, _that_ wasn't happening. Leo spent his subsequent time hunched over his work with his chair pulled to the end of the table farthest from his unwanted guest, who insisted they switch seats several times throughout the day whenever he claimed he could feel a draft coming through the tent flap, but whether or not this was true or he was just doing it from pure spite, all Leo knew with any real certainty was that arguing with the man never did him much good.

But, as hard as it was to concentrate with Kefka drumming his long nails on the tabletop and making a show of hacking and sneezing and sniffing, while Leo was forced to inch down the table with each new chance to contract the other man's sickness, it grew harder still when Kefka began to pace about the tent and touch anything he could possibly get his filthy, bacteria-ridden hands on, the insurmountable weakness he believed to have overtaken him that morning apparently healed, forcing Leo into a graceless dance about the tent to keep the distance between them in that small space at a maximum. No matter how antsy Kefka had become as the day neared its end, however, he never appeared stricken with the urge to leave, and after being driven from his newest spot one time too many, Leo retreated outside, where he had scarcely wandered since the camp's misfortune first struck, but with his own tent no longer a safe haven, he might as well take his chances out here. If he got sick, he would at least like to believe it wasn't Kefka's germs that had done it to him.

He returned to his tent a short while after nightfall, no lamp yet lit to push away the darkness, but that was a good sign, and he breathed a sigh of sweet relief as he fumbled about for the matches, one of the few things he hoped Kefka hadn't felt the urge to infect that day.

"Would you put out that blasted light, Leo?" he heard a voice say once the lamp had been lit, and he grew stiff as his head made a slow sweep across the tent to land on a certain man. In _his_ cot. Using _his_ pillow.

"What are you doing?"

Kefka glared up at him with his eyes squinted in the light. "What's it _look_ like I'm doing? You said I could use your sheets."

"Not…" Leo rubbed his forehead and went to sit in his chair.

"The lamp, Leo."

He blew out the lamp, resigning himself to what he was sure would be a very long night.

* * *

Kefka remained in his company the next day. And the next. And as their hours spent in close proximity to each other increased, so, too, did the degree of his illness. Oh, and his foul mood. That got worse, too.

Mistaking Leo's presence for an indication that the General was actually interested in what he had to say (when he wasn't hacking and ignoring the tissues Leo had brought for him, or napping, in Leo's cot), Kefka spent much of his time moaning about how unfair it was that Leo got everything, while swearing up and down that he had never once in his entire life ever gotten what _he_ wanted, and he had expressed a great desire that Leo fell ill to something quite painful and, preferably, permanently disfiguring very soon, a fate Leo announced he was completely fine with as long as it was fatal. For the first time in their unfortunate association with one another, Kefka agreed with him.

It provided Leo with no shortage of pleasure, then, the morning Kefka had woken up to find he had lost his voice, no doubt a punishment for all the screaming he had been directing at any soldier that so much as whispered outside of Leo's tent, claiming them to be the ones responsible for aggravating his headache, the irony of which he never once seemed to grasp.

His relief was short-lived, however, when the man found new, silent ways to be a pest, and he began to snatch away Leo's notes right out from under him, along with his pen, to doodle gruesome (and nauseatingly creative) depictions of the many ways in which Leo might die one day, including one Kefka had sniggered a great deal over, entitled "spontaneous decapitation". He didn't like the sound of that.

And once this failed to bring about the same level of enthusiasm as before, he settled instead for folding Leo's notes up into delicate paper birds and fish, a rather impressive feat, he had to admit, and completely unexpected from one so inclined to ruin everything he laid eyes on. Before he set them on fire, of course. He could imagine Cid's greatest regret in life was granting Kefka the ability to wield fire magic.

As horrid as the other man's company was, however, Leo couldn't deny a certain satisfaction at how well he had done to be the only person, thus far, to have eluded the camp's own private epidemic. Even after a week had passed since Kefka had felt the need to invade his tent, he still felt as good as ever, physically, at least. He thought his mental health had eroded a degree, but that was a natural consequence of Kefka's presence and was something he had been suffering with for some years now. You learned to cope after a while.

Well, perhaps there was _one_ physical ailment he had recently been stricken with as a result of the other man's company. While he had no stuffed up nose or sore throat to speak of, he had since developed quite the ache in his lower back from sleeping in his unyielding, wooden chair each night, and it had made its way so deep into the muscle, he wondered if it would eventually travel all the way through to his stomach next. The sight of Kefka's feverish face certainly made him sick enough. Maybe the two were related.

Leo rubbed at his aching back with the knuckles of one hand. Kefka had been suspiciously quiet this past hour, with the gradual return of his voice (of course it couldn't have been permanent, not with _his_ luck) and whatever other racket he was usually so inclined to make, and he had tried not to look over and see what the other man was doing because it never failed to be something Leo regretted discovering. With work being nearly impossible to focus on, however, thanks to the nagging pain in his back and a morbid curiosity at exactly what in the world Kefka could possibly be up to _now_, it was easy to allow a lapse in his earlier resoluteness to not, under any circumstances, give in and glance over at whatever nonsense Kefka was currently engaged in, and he leaned back in his seat and craned his neck as he attempted to even _find_ the other man to begin with.

Kefka was short and rather adept at cramming himself into small spaces, a fact Leo had discovered after the first few times the man had pounced on him after emerging from places he would have never expected a human to be able to fit into, not one with bones, at least, confirming to him that Kefka was apparently not claustrophobic in the slightest. Nevertheless, there was really nowhere in Leo's tent for even _him_ to hide, and even if there was, he would have to wait in it a very long time indeed when Leo had no intention of abandoning his work anytime soon.

Not having any success finding him from this angle, the General tried peering from under the table, and his eyes narrowed as they were met with a rather extensive mess, with Kefka, as expected, right in the middle of it. The man was currently sitting on his feet before the trunk Leo kept his things in, surrounded by clothing Leo had apparently been far too engrossed in his work to notice had been pulled out, every last article of it, and strewn about the ground. As peevish as this was, and as bothered as it made him to think that, not only would _he_ be the one stuck cleaning up this mess, but he also kept his _undergarments_ in there, what he found most disturbing of all was the fact that he kept that trunk locked and the key in his pocket.

"No," Leo said, in a tone akin to admonishing a mutt that had chewed up one's boots.

He stood, and Kefka looked back at him, no concern apparent on his freshly painted face (he was starting to understand why Kefka took so long to get ready in the morning after being stuck watching the man nitpick over his makeup for over an hour). In fact, he even had the nerve to raise his eyebrows at Leo in the manner of one being interrupted from very important work. He lifted one hand to display an unfolded piece of paper.

"What's _this_, Leo?" he said, his voice unable to rise much higher than a scratchy whisper, which also accounted for the short sentences he had been forced to confine himself to as of late.

Leo's face paled, and Kefka grinned.

"Put that back."

"I've already read it."

That was an old letter. He wasn't even entirely sure why he still kept it. It meant nothing, though. And he would explain that fact to the other man if he thought it would do any good. He hadn't found the others, had he? Not that there _were_ any, of course.

Leo took his sword from his belt, resisting a sudden urge to unsheathe it, and Kefka's smile fell. He wasn't going to use it. Not for its intended purpose anyway, as much as he would like to. He just needed a long object.

He approached slowly, the other man not budging an inch except to follow Leo with his gaze, and it struck him how close he might be to bursting into flames, not unlike one drawing Kefka had sketched smack-dab in the middle of a note Leo had just been about to send to the Emperor. He was tempted to do it anyway, just as further proof, not that any should be needed, that Kefka should be locked away until the day he died, and then longer still, for good measure.

Leo stopped nearby, Kefka's face darkening into the kind of solemn expression that so often proceeded all manner of horrific acts, and he could imagine the situation he had just walked into so willingly to not be so very different from waking up in the middle of the night to find a rattlesnake coiled up on your bed. A rattlesnake that enjoyed fire just a bit too much.

Hoping his imminent death would be a swift one, he poked Kefka with the sheathed end of his sword, and his victim dropped the letter, now crumpled, so he could better swat the offending object away, but Leo jabbed harder still until he jumped to his feet.

"Go," Leo said when the other man showed no further signs of retreat, but Kefka's stance remained firm, until the General made to jab at him again, and he jumped backwards, nearly tripping over the clothes he had left scattered about the floor when a pair of pants wrapped around his ankle. Now outside of Leo's reach, Kefka found it safe to stop again and glare at him, and while the General would have liked very badly to chase the man out of his tent entirely, he supposed it wouldn't be the wisest thing to do if he valued his life any.

The General backed away, trying his best to avoid the hate-filled gaze still locked onto him, and he felt about behind him for his chair. He returned to his seat once it was found, keeping his sword nearby, just in case it was necessary for him to defend himself, not that steel would likely do much good against fire and poison, but Kefka eventually withdrew to Leo's cot, where he continued to glare at him for several minutes longer before curling up for his third nap that day.

The General wrapped his hand in his cape to push Kefka's metal water cup further away from himself before taking a drink from his own. (By now, the water was of a flat warmth. Because it was hot out. Kefka's shivering was fooling no one.) He'd clean up the mess the man had made later, not that there was much point when Kefka would only make another one anyway.

Leo took this opportunity to return to his work, most of which needed repeating after Kefka had stolen, burned, or otherwise sabotaged any and all of his efforts to get anything done. He seriously thought he might actually have _less_ completed now than he did a week ago. After the passing of several hours, however, he became aware of a presence behind him and grew stiff.

"Kefka," he said.

"Is that mine?"

"Is _what_ yours?"

"_That_."

Leo ducked to the side as Kefka snatched up his water cup and began to inspect it closely, but for what, he had no idea. Apparently he would need to get himself a new one now. One that Kefka hadn't breathed on.

"This one's mine," Kefka said.

The General scraped his chair further away from the other man and pointed at the cup to his right. "No, _that_ one's yours. Remember?" It was closer to his cot, which he had since dubbed as Kefka's side of the tent, where the man spent most of his time and where the air was most infectious. Leo was well aware that air wasn't content to stay in one place. He just tried not to think about that.

Kefka shook his head. "I switched them."

Leo grew silent as the man's scarcely heard statement sank in. "You switched them…. And why'd you do that?"

"To _alphabetize_ them." The man pointed one slender finger at where the cup in his hand had just been. "Kefka." And then to the other on the right. "Leo." His eyes rolled back over to the General, and he stared down at him as if this should have been the most obvious thing in the world, and Leo was a fool to have assumed otherwise.

He _was_ a fool to assume Kefka wouldn't pull something like this. And here he was, thinking at least _one_ thing he had been working so hard at this week had actually paid off.

Leo stood. "Get out."

Kefka arched an eyebrow at him as he drank from the cup Leo had unwittingly been using all day. "Hnn?"

His hands clenched into fists. "Get. Out."

Kefka shook his head, not once taking the cup from his mouth.

Leo grabbed hold of him, causing the man to drop his cup, which gave a dull clank in protest as it landed at their feet, and water spilled out while it was still rolling to sink into the dirt that made up the tent floor. Kefka tried to scream, as he so often did the countless times Leo had been forced to get physical with him in the past, but was unable when the curse that was his voice had still not been fully restored to him, and he clawed at Leo and swung his arms about as the General pushed him towards the tent flap. He almost jerked out of his grip several times, but Leo held firm, even if he couldn't prevent his papers and oil lamp from being tugged off the table, and he threw Kefka outside, the man continuing to flail about until he landed on his backend in the dust.

The General returned inside with muted curses following close behind. His throat was already starting to itch.

* * *

Leo awoke the next morning, and if he hadn't known better, he would have said it was the many nights spent sleeping in a chair that had caused his backache to spread to every muscle in his body. But, he did know better, and he knew exactly who was at fault for the nauseatingly bad headache that had greeted him as soon as his eyes were jabbed by the needles of morning sunlight that had never before seemed so bright. He swallowed and winced at the rawness in his throat, and he tried to sit up straighter, but his head felt heavy and didn't want to follow, and he had a strong inclination to stumble over to his cot and never leave it again, even the fact that Kefka had too recently been occupying it no longer a sufficient deterrent.

He managed to prop up his throbbing head with one fist just in time to catch Kefka prancing in through the tent flap, the very picture of health, _physical_ health, at least, with no indication whatsoever that he had just been in the same miserable state Leo was in now. The man stopped before him with his arms spread wide and breathed deep through his nostrils, a skill Leo had just lost.

"It sure isn't much fun being sick, is it, Leo? Now maybe you'll have some sympathy for what I had to go through."

The General made no response, and Kefka looked about ready to draw nearer, then thought better of it when Leo coughed, a thoroughly ragged one, and his earlier grin soured into utter disgust. "Ick! I'd better get out of here before _I_ catch something again. You look absolutely horrid, Leo." He spun on his heel with a flourish of his cape to put his back to him, before turning his head halfway. "And you ought to get this place cleaned up. I expected better from you."

With that, he sauntered back outside, and Leo dropped his head onto folded arms. If he had known being sick would have been enough to keep Kefka away, he would've caught something sooner.

* * *

So I thought this story was rather humorous, wouldn't you agree? And just as a random note, the spontaneous decapitation thing actually came from a "Kingdom Hearts" story I started and never completed, in which Braig was doodling this very thing happening to Even in one of the books in the library. I thought it was hilarious, and since that story is never going to be published, I decided it would work just fine in this story instead.

Anyway, please review, my dear readers, and let me know if my story gave you some chuckles and/or giggles.


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